I had some setbacks:
- I made lunch for my grown daughter, who follows a vegan diet. I made whole wheat pasta with cauliflower, broccoli, carrots, oven-dried potatoes and garbanzo beans. We each added various oils and seasonings, and I opted for vegetarian rather than vegan by adding three kinds of cheese to mine. It was really tasty, so I ate the leftovers for supper that night and again for lunch the next day. All that carby, veggie goodness made it hard for me to stay awake by Saturday afternoon.
- On Sunday, we visited my dad and he served us mostly junk. Now, of course I had the choice to not eat, and I did avoid some of it, but I would never intentionally hurt the feelings of a host (especially family) who sets out food with love. So I did the best I could.
- I do, however, claim full responsibility for the second soda I had on the way home from my dad's.
- I ate a school lunch on Valentine's Day. You can read about it in my post from Wednesday.
- I don't think I did a single thing toward getting extra exercise this week.
I made some gains as well:
- I reduced the sugar in our big batches of iced tea even more than last week. We were using 3/4 cup in a gallon of tea, and now we are down to 1/2 cup.
- I am still using honey, cane juice crystals, molasses, etc. in baking, although I didn't do as much baking this past week.
- I have rediscovered the wonders of coconut oil. I knew about the health benefits that come from eating it, but I had never really put coconut oil into heavy rotation in my kitchen. It is now!
- Coconut oil is making it's way into our bathroom, too, as a moisturizer, toothpaste, hair conditioner and so on.
- I've been trying to add more veggies to our evening meals. For supper, we usually have meat, a starch and two veggies (or maybe just one veggie occasionally). I'm trying to add a third vegetable, or sometimes a piece of fruit, to most of our dinners.
- I'm doing great at eating breakfast. I don't think I missed a day all week. I've had either oatmeal, oat bran or an avocado for most of my morning meals, and when it was oats, I stirred in a spoonful of coconut oil.
- We're still drinking kombucha daily, and in fact, I set up a continuous brewing system yesterday.
- We did not go candy crazy on Valentine's Day. I bought Kat two small candy items and rounded out her gift with a craft kit. Something to do, rather than something to eat. :) I made a batch of just five cupcakes from my Small Batch Baking book, but I used whole wheat flour, coconut oil and cane juice crystals in the cake and real butter in the frosting instead of ingredients that were listed. BTW, one of those cupcakes still sits in the fridge uneaten.
- We ate salmon twice during the week. Living in the Midwest, the choices are frozen or canned. If it is "fresh" (as in, not frozen) in the seafood case, it was probably still frozen during transit. We ate previously frozen fillets one night and quinoa-salmon patties from canned salmon another. In both cases, I made sure they were wild, not farmed. We all like fish, so these dishes were a hit.
- I'm still sticking to my 11:00 p.m. to 6 a.m. sleep schedule. I find it really makes a positive difference when I stay on a schedule.
As for how I feel, the most noticeable change is that I feel like I have more energy during the day, and that I might be sleeping better at night. When I didn't eat meat for several meals in a row, I felt a lot more sluggish, then better when I finally did eat some animal protein.
I feel like my skin is clearer and brighter.
I had a migraine headache, but it was both milder and shorter in duration than most. While I'd love to attribute that to something dietary, this will have to happen consistently before I chalk it up to anything other than some good luck.
One other thing I've noticed is that I've been comfortably warm. I have hypothyroidism and I often feel uncomfortably cool. That condition seem to have improved very recently.
It's just past mid-month. Plenty of time to do better in the next couple of weeks...I hope.
